'Almost Maine' at State Theater is 'beautifully weird'

Adrian Ahern, left and Tracy McCoy in the Bay Street Players'… (Photo by William McCoy )

April 25, 2014|By Christine Cole, Correspondent

EUSTIS — The play "Almost, Maine" sets pairs of people on collision courses like the energy-charged particles that create the Northern lights, a device the author uses to anchor each vignette in time.

Each whimsical vignette illuminates the moments before love strikes, during its embrace and after love has gone, all happening at the same time on a cold, clear night in a mythical Maine town near the Canadian border.

The play, written by John Cariani, opens at 7:30 p.m. Sunday as a second-stage production of the Bay Street Players.

Actor Tracy McCoy said the characters in the play may be odd, but they are very real.

"If they aren't us — and many are us — then they are people we know," she said.

Her husband, William McCoy directed the four-person cast in a play he described as "beautifully weird."

The other actors are Adrian Aherne, Eric Bridges and Jennifer Roman.

"Sometimes the hardest thing to play well is real people," McCoy said. "I like to think that there is somebody in the audience every night who needs to see this show, and it is my responsibility as a director to that one person."

In the sketch "Sad and Glad," a fellow runs into his ex-girlfriend on her way to her bachelorette party. The trouble is that they broke up because she said she did not want to be married. In "Where It Went," the wife has lost her shoe, which magically falls from the sky.

Tracy McCoy takes part in a vignette called "Her Heart," as she carries her broken heart around in a bag.

"We all understand the feeling of carrying around a broken heart," she said. "We all understand that we hold it close to protect it, but we hold it where everyone can see it."

"Almost, Maine" will continue at the State Theatre, 109 N. Bay St., with performances on May 4 and 11. Tickets are $12 for adults and $7 for students. For reservations or for more information, call 352-357-7777.